Keywords

Emergency response, incident management, usability
engineering

Abstract

Designing the user interface of Bioterror Incident
Management (BIM) tools requires consideration of very
different issues than those associated with more typical
business and consumer applications. This paper examines
the BIM environment from the standpoint of usability
engineering and interaction design. Five key
characteristics of the BIM environment are summarized.
These include: high stress, irregular work patterns,
ambiguous information overload, intense collaboration
and expertise diversity. Each of these characteristics poses
complex issues for the interaction designer. Based on the
literature in usability engineering and Emergency
Management, we propose a set of high-level design
principles for BIM tools.